Mostly agreed with you, mate.
Sometimes, I am sure Pepe is a quality player who can really make an impact someday.
However, he looks very soft/slender when dribbling and clumsy when defending.
In many occasions, I hoped he could dribble with purpose; he can make use of his dribbling capability in order to create free space for his teammates at a right time. That way can make a huge difference to the outcome.
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I know people like to use minutes played because they think it’s fair but statistically it doesn’t work like that. Giroud at one point had one of the best GPM ratios in the league when we were using him as an impact sub, does that make him the best striker in the PL at the time? Better than Aguero?
If Pepe played 90 mins every week, his stats probably wouldn’t be that much better imo and his gpm/apm ratios would just worsen.
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Can we easily see how many of those ten goals were scored in his 16 starts and how many were scored in his sub appearances?
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Its only 1 goal and 1 assist as a sub, I looked earlier.
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Probably bro. I’ll try and do a proper breakdown when I’m on my laptop
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Aren’t these two things that managers are meant to be able to help players with, rather than solely being innate qualities that are ingrained from the start and totally fixed?
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For the first perhaps but the second is more sports psychologist territory tbh
And I said that because I just don’t see it in him firstly being consistent to the requisite level and secondly having a killer mindset regardless of who’s coaching him.
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Man ended last season with the same number of stupid red cards as he did assists.
I feel like those who really back Pepe were probably the staunchest Podolski fans. Now I think Lukas had way more talent but he had the same knack of doing nothing for most of the game and popping up with a goal every 3 games.
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I find him frustrating and ever so easy for the opposition to cancel out in games mostly.
Do think the lad we just bought at right back is not what he needs and will not see him improve. Think the last roll of the dice for him was a strong fast full back and this lad won’t be it.
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Podolski was actually decent up until he went to bayern. Both are Completely different type of players. Robben or Bale would be more of a comparable. But those two were way faster than Pepe. And were far better footballers . Moved better off the ball also better finishers as well .
Always a passenger in the tougher games. He scored one goal against teams that finished in the top nine last year, and that was a tap in against Leicester when we were already on top.
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So pretty much nothing like him 
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Those two cut inside a lot and are pretty much one footed. Gervinho is closet to Pepe. But was trying to be nice here lol
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He’s a decent enough player and probably on the same skill level as ESR and Odegaard but if he wasn’t our record signing I think he would be more appreciated.
Like most of our players, Pepe is not dynamic enough to be a match winner and his lack of imagination and flair in most games is what we are missing in the team generally.
Is this his fault or is Arteta not getting the best out of him?
If it was just Pepe who wasn’t playing to his full potential, I would say it’s down to him but almost all our players, apart from the consistently top quality Xhaka, are struggling so the answer is fairly obvious.
It would be interesting to see how Pepe would perform under a proper manager, with players who aren’t unmotivated.
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That’s what I thought when looking into Takehiro a bit, seems much more defensive minded whereas a attacking FB that can overlap and combine is what Pepe actually needs.
Not sure whether Takehiro is incapable or was simply asked to be purely defensive but on the face of it seems an odd acquisition in that regard.
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That’s completely different, Giroud like you say was coming off the bench and scoring lots of goals as an impact sub, Pepe (as far as I’ve noticed) is not scoring considerably more when he comes off the bench than when he starts, so when you treat a 10 minute cameo as a whole “match played” then you’re just unfairly swaying the stats
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people are rewriting history with this. Pepe was horrendous starting last season and gave no reason to play . Scored a lot against Europe league teams. And He also had decent end in the last 4 games. I think he boosted his stats big time with a couple braces in the last two games of the season. The sad thing was bar the game against the Fulham, Willian was putting in 0/10’s almost every week. And Pepe when he came off the bench did not offer a thing.
All bashing aside, I really hope Pepe comes good.
Very few modern footballer can dribble their way to consistency.
Ronaldo became a beast once he removed needless dribbling out of his game.
Pepe is more dangerous when he is either one on one with someone, or he is played in direct. So in a way Arteta has failed to adapt to Pepe.
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The only difference is Giroud made an impact as a sub while Pepe seems to come on and be useless.
Precisely why I think if he got more minutes we wouldn’t see a huge improvement in his tallies. You can’t just extrapolate his current sample size and say if he doubled his minutes he’d be notching 20 goals in 32 games…there’s absolutely no way that is in his locker.
I’ve acknowledged he has a lot of sub apps, I called that out from the start but that doesn’t make this ‘10 PL goals in 1600 minutes’ any more credible either.
Because Giroud comes on and we just ping balls into the box for him to get his head on, Pepe isn’t that kind of player 
We bring Pepe on when we’re inevitably behind and need a goal, which means the opposition are sitting back to protect the lead.
That means there’s no space in behind which doesn’t suit Pepe, and therefore surprise surprise he doesn’t produce as much as someone like Giroud would in that situation, (who would love the opposition sitting back so he can sit close to goal).
You have no more evidence to suggest that he couldn’t than I have that he could.
Neither of us will know until he’s given a full season at first choice, which more than likely won’t happen with Arteta at the throne.
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